It was a cold, damp April afternoon — the kind that settles slowly into your body, chilling you to the bone. The sky was a mottled gray, and I was standing in the muddy grass, face to face with the enemy. He leveled his eyes at me; I stared right back at him, as if to say, Carlos, you’re going down.

Yes, that would be the associate editor of this newspaper. No, it wasn’t a bizarre new kind of editing wherein the editor and writer mud-wrestle over grammar disagreements, although I could get behind that idea. It was intramural softball, and last Monday I found myself in the strange situation of playing against the Cornell Dairy Sluggers (an athletics official made a typo).

I was on the Kitsch Magazine team. Imagine the match-up: a small features magazine facing off against a newspaper that could draw its team from over 200 members, including a sports board. Plus, they had Per Ostman, and that guy’s like eight feet tall. My five-foot-two self was understandably intimidated.

But somehow we won. Somehow, despite the fact that our opponents were a hard-boiled conglomeration of athletes and Mexicans while we were a ragtag team of English majors and gay men, despite the fact that our team shirts were an oh-so-intimidating shade of baby blue, despite the fact that at one point we had two runners on third base at the same time, we won. It was like an after-school special.

Were I more of a team player (or a chauvinist), I’d call it a bittersweet victory; while I do love a good win, my tenure at The Sun has been one of the most significant parts of my time at Cornell. I started as a second-semester sophomore and soon developed quite a crush on the paper, if such a thing is possible; it was all I talked about — The Sun this, The Sun that — and I’m sure it drove my friends nuts. The prospect of writing a column with a readership in the thousands was dizzyingly exciting, and, as an added bonus, guys outnumbered girls on staff by something like five to one, which seemed like pretty good odds to my single self.

Well, two and a half years later, some things have changed and some haven’t. I still spend far too much time each week writing my column (it usually expands to occupy an entire day, believe it or not) and I still become semi-delirious with excitement at the thought that thousands of pairs of eyes look over the newspaper in which my column runs. Though my extracurriculars have grown exponentially over the years, my column for The Sun is still the accomplishment I list most proudly on my résumé, and the lessons I’ve learned about the writing process, along with my criticism-thickened skin, will hopefully stay with me for the rest of my life.

Which, incidentally, begins with the end of this column. My thesis has been handed in — I defended it Monday afternoon — and I’m not taking any classes this semester, so by the time you read these words I’ll be essentially done with college. All that’s left is commencement, and then it’s on to the next phase of my life, pursuing a PhD in anthropology at the University of Chicago. (By the way, the good odds paid off; I’ll be moving to Chicago with fellow columnist and love of my life Jim Shliferstein ’06.) As much as I hate to sound trite, it seems like just yesterday I was walking into the Sun office for the first time, wide-eyed and terrified of what I was getting myself into. Even then, I planned what I would write in my last column, but as I sit here at my computer, I feel as though this task has suddenly been foisted upon me without warning.

And there’s something nice about that, I think — about the fact that it all feels like it’s ending way too soon. Who wants to stay somewhere until they get sick of it, bringing resentment and bad memories with them when they go? No, it’s better to go while you still want to stay; there’s beauty in that fleetingness, that precarious balance between too little time and too much. The sunset, with its transient ebb and flow of colors, is all the more enthralling because you never know when the brilliant reds and oranges will subside into a dull navy blue. Where the bloat of surfeit is filled with regret, the empty ache of wanting is steeped in possibility.

Which I guess is all just a roundabout way of saying that, as much as I try to be cynical, I am optimistic at heart. My moniker, “Vim and Vinegar,” was chosen to reflect this balance; though I have complained, week after week, about the various problems of the world, I think I’ve made it clear that my criticisms stem from adoration — there is a hopefulness in the acerbic edge to my voice. I love this crazy, ill-informed, misguided world, and I can’t wait to dig in.

But first I have some thanks to give, of course. To those who have edited me, Carlos, Zach, and especially Erica: thank you for shortening my intros, lengthening my conclusions, and making my middles slightly less incoherent. To my parents: thank you for supporting me, even in some of my most reckless decisions, both financially and emotionally. To the professors who have inspired me, especially Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Sally McConnell-Ginet, Elaine Wethington, and Kath March: thank you for your guidance and your advice, and for taking me seriously, although I’ve never been quite sure what I did to warrant it. To my fantastic housemates, Simmie, Melissa, Brita, and Jess: I am really going to miss living with an ensemble cast (I’ll be living with Jim next year, but I have a feeling that will be less like a sitcom and more like an Abbott and Costello routine). Melissa, I hope we can get adjacent apartments in Chicago so that we can knock out messages to each other in Morse code. And to Jim: there are no words that can express the richness you have brought to my life.

So that’s that — another package neatly tied up. Another phase of my life come to a close. And though there may be beauty in the fleeting, my eyes aren’t filled with tears because I’m overwhelmed by the beauty; it’s because I don’t want to go. I think that means it’s time.